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I'm moving into a new home and installing a 5.1 Surround Sound System, 6 interior rooms of background music and 2 patio speakers. I will be purchasing a new receiver and I'm having trouble deciding between the Denon AVR 2312 or 3312.

This is what I'd like to accomplish. I want the receiver to power a 5.1 system in my living room. Then I have an existing 8 room 4 zone russound abus hub with a-kp keypads. I'll be using this to run 6 rooms of background music and would like to only run one stereo input into the hub from the denon receiver to share all the sources that i'll have hooked into the receiver. I don't mind if it won't play digital through to the russound hub. Then I'll be installing two patio speakers out back and i'd like to power these directly off the receiver's amp to provide them more power since the abus keypads are limited.

So what I'm unsure of is if the 3312 has the ability to run everything listed above or would it be more cost efficient to buy the 2312 and also a 2 channel external amp to power the patio speakers.

Also, if anyone as experience with hooking an abus system to a denon receiver I sure could use the help on how to properly hook them up together.

The 3312 will handle three zones, so it should work. Hook the patio speakers to the "SURR BACK/AMP ASSIGN" speaker jacks and assign them to zone 2. Then connect the zone 3 pre-outs to the Russound to get signal to it.

The 3312CI can do you what you require ... 5.1 in the main zone, Zone 2 powered by the AVR and the Zone 3 preouts connected to the Russound power source. And yes, in addition to analog you can also pass PCM 2.0 via optical/digital coax, internet radio, Airplay, and USB connected devices to Zones 2/3.

If I decide to install a 7.1 system do I lose one of the zones on the receiver?

Also, the theater speakers I'm gonna buy are 125w power handling, but they also offer the same model in a 150w version but I didn't want to dish out the extra money. Do you think the 125w speakers would be fine considering that the receivers puts out 125w per channel?

Yes, you lose a "powered" Zone 2 which would require connecting the Zone 2 preouts to an external amp to gain it back (just as your Zone 3 is powered by the Russound amp). The speaker ratings are irrelevent, not to mention that the vast majority of the time your speakers are only drawing <5W/CH.

No ... there are only 7 powered channels .. so if you are running 7.1 in the main zone you have none left over for Zones 2/3, both of which would have to be connected to external power sources via the Zone 2/3 preouts.